Month: October 2022
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Postdoctoberfest Spotlight: Jean Monlong
It is Postdoctoberfest! This week, we are celebrating the vital contributions that postdoctoral scholars make to UC Santa Cruz, and to the advancement of science more broadly. This Postdoctober, we are spotlighting Jean Monlong, who has been a postdoc with the Genomics Institute since 2018. His research in Benedict Paten’s lab is part of a…
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Semi-automated assembly of high-quality diploid human reference genomes
Abstract The current human reference genome, GRCh38, represents over 20 years of effort to generate a high-quality assembly, which has benefitted society1,2. However, it still has many gaps and errors, and does not represent a biological genome as it is a blend of multiple individuals3,4. Recently, a high-quality telomere-to-telomere reference, CHM13, was generated with the…
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Investigating bias in technology through Baskin Engineering’s anti-racism research fellowship
Melissa Weckerle | UCSC | October 14, 2022 Technology is vulnerable to bias. Recognizing the need for anti-racist technology that takes into consideration the perceptions and experiences of underrepresented populations, the UC Santa Cruz Baskin School of Engineering established the Fellowship for Anti-Racism Research (FARR) in 2021. Graduate students Roman Reggiardio and Milad Hakimshafaei are…
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Biomolecular engineering professor wins American Cancer Society award to develop technology for cancer early detection
Emily Cerf | UCSC | October 12, 2022 UC Santa Cruz Assistant Professor of Biomolecular Engineering Daniel Kim’s research centers around the mysteries of RNA “dark matter,” which is made from 75% of the three billion base pairs in the human genome, with the goal of discovering new RNA biomarkers for cancer early detection to…
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CALeDNA: Tracking biodiversity at the molecular level
Jen Elana Quick-Cleveland | ASBMBToday | October 12, 2022 An estimated 9 million kinds of plants, animals, protists and fungi live on Earth. Biodiversity loss is a major problem associated with human-made climate change. The current global rate of extinction is predicted to be nearly 100 times the baseline rate. But measuring those extinctions, or even accurately…
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New Live Cell Biotechnology Discovery Lab Aims to Reshape STEM Education
October 13, 2022 The UC Santa Cruz Genomics Institute has created a new Live Cell Biotechnology Discovery Lab as a maker space dedicated to creating the next generation of technologies for remote education. The lab, which occupies part of the second floor of the UCSC Westside Research Park, is inspired by an effort to improve…
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UCSC engineer played crucial role in 2022 Nobel Prize-winning research
Biomolecular engineering’s Richard (Ed) Green collaborated with medalist Svante Pääbo’s research on the Neanderthal genome Emily Cerf | UCSC | October 11, 2022 The 2022 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to Swedish geneticist Svante Pääbo for his research on human evolution, specifically in using contemporary tools to sequence and compare the genomes…
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New Educational Module for UCSC Genome Browser
In response to requests from users, we are announcing a new education module in the UCSC Genome Browser training pages. The UCSC Genome Browser is our most widely used genomics tool. Tens of thousands of researchers access it each year to view all 23 chromosomes of the human genome, down to its individual nucleotides. It…
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Carol Greider honored by the Association for Molecular Pathology (AMP)
UC Santa Cruz genomics institute affiliate Carol Greider is being honored by the Association for Molecular Pathology (AMP) for her pioneering work in telomere research and its impact on the field of molecular diagnostics.